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American Record Labels and Companies

Los Angeles’ Blue Bird Label

By Allan Sutton
Label photo courtesy of Kurt Nauck

   
Blue Bird ranks among the earliest of the Los Angeles-based record labels, along with Nordskog and Golden. However, unlike those labels (which are examined at length in Recording the 'Twenties), Blue Bird did not maintain a West Coast studio. Instead, it drew its material entirely from East Coast recordings by the New York Recording Laboratories, the makers of Paramount records.
           

An undated advertising card for Blue Bird phonograph. Similar advertisements appeared
in The Talking Machine World during the summer and autumn of 1921.
(Author's collection)
   

With the Nordskog and Golden ventures still in their formative stages, NYRL — as the western-most American record manufacturer at that time, with their pressing plant in Grafton, Wisconsin — was a logical choice for supplier. Unfortunately, Paramount fans hoping to find jazz or blues or performances on Blue Bird will be disappointed. The records, which seem to have been sold only during 1921, pre-date NYRL's plunge into the race-record market. Instead, they feature the usual New York fare by such pedestrian performers as Sam Ash, Billy Murray, and Adrian Shubert's Orchestra, selectively duplicating Paramount releases of 1920–21.
    

Blue Bird releases used the same couplings and catalog numbers as the
Paramount issues from which they were derived.
(Courtesy of Kurt Nauck)

NYRL pressed the records for Moses F. Fybush's Blue Bird Talking Machine Company (5607 Santa Fe Avenue, Los Angeles). Fybush maintained showrooms in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. His t trademark application, filed from Los Angeles on August 6, 1919, claimed use of the Blue Bird brand on phonographs since July 14 of that year, but it did not mention records. The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office also granted Fybush at least one design patent for a phonograph cabinet in 1920. Unlike the records, the phonographs do not appear to be NYRL products, although their manufacturer(s) remains to be determined.